This course proposes an overview of current global health challenges drawing on the insights of several academic disciplines including medicine, public health, law, economics, social sciences and humanities. This interdisciplinary approach will guide the student into seven critical topics in global health.

De la lección

Research, Development, Innovation and Technology for Global Health

This module addresses the lack of attention to research and development for medicines and technologies for diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries and all the issues related to drug development and intellectual property rights.

Conoce a los instructores

Rafael Ruiz De Castañeda

Institute of Global Health - Faculty of MedicineUniversity of Geneva

Antoine Flahault

Professor of Public Health and Director of the Institute of Global Health (Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva) and co-Director of Centre Virchow-Villermé (Université Paris Descartes)University of Geneva and Université Paris Descartes – Sorbonne Paris Cité

[MUSIC]

Hello everyone.

My name is Jayashree and I'm going to talk to you about trade,

intellectual property rights and public health.

So let's begin with the topics I'm going to cover.

First, the interaction between these three subjects, then a little bit about what

intellectual property rights are and why we have them.

What is their economic rationale?

How do they impact innovation and access to medical technologies?

And last but not least, the special case of neglected tropical diseases.

This is a graph which I've taken from the report done by

the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization,

and the World Trade Organization.

This is available on the web, and I will leave you to study at your leisure.

All I want to point out to you

is that there are three intersecting circles in the middle.

The smaller circles on the side describe the policies.

The ones in blue talk about public health policies.

In red, intellectual property policies and green, the trade policies.

So let me just mention two trade policies which could be relevant for

access and innovation.

Access in particular could be affected by tariff barriers and

even other non-tariff barriers.

So tariff barriers, what are they?

They are customs duties which are levied for

instance on medicines which make the prices of medicines higher.

Non-tariff, what could these be?

These could be health regulations, regulations on certain products which then

could lead to the blockage of imports of certain products and there are rules.

The rule basically says that it has to be necessary.

Necessary to take this measure which affects trade.

And it's not that,

WTO member countries are not allowed to take measures to regulate health.

It's just that when it has an adverse effect on trade,

it has to be adequately justified in terms of it being necessary.

Let me now turn to what intellectual property rights are,

because this is something that most people may not have heard of.

So, intellectual property refers to creations of the human mind or

the intellect.

And there are three characteristics of intellectual property rights in general.

One, they are exclusive, meaning that the right

holder can prevent others, who do not have his or

her authorization to use the proprietary product or invention or creation.

The second important characteristic of intellectual property rights

is that they're usually temporary.

I say usually because there are some exceptions like trade secrets, for

instance, which remain valid for a long period of time.

Which remain valid until somebody else discovers them through honest means for

instance.

The third characteristic that we need to refer to is that intellectual

property rights are applicable territory by territory.

Meaning there is no such thing as a global intellectual property right.

So you have to apply for it and get it granted in each territory.

For example, for a patent or for a copyright, it is automatically available

provided that the countries follow certain international norms.

But in general, a patent valid in the United States is not valid

in Switzerland automatically, that's the third criteria that one needs to remember.

Why don't we have intellectual property rights?

This is an important question.

There are two categories in general that economists would say in terms of

the economic function of rights.

One is those intellectual property rights that aim to incentivize innovation or

creation, example patents and copyrights.

And this is the category that we need to deal with here.

This is more relevant for us in this presentation.

These rights serve a purpose.

They serve to correct the market failure that there would not be innovation

if there was a perfectly competitive market situation.

So in perfect competition, where markets are completely competitive that,

the originator puts out an innovative product.

Others come in and copy those products, and within a short period of time,

the profits of the originator who puts in the innovative product are competed away.

This would then mean that there would be no incentive for

innovators to put new products onto the market because the cost they incurred in